“You must know that though I’ve been in jail I’m not a bad woman,” she continued. “If I had been, he’d have divorced me, or at least put me away, for he was too poor to afford lawyer’s fees. He’s only a factory worker like myself.”
“How can that be, when you told me just now that you saw him riding in a carriage with a grand lady?” I asked, thinking to catch her up.
“That’s the mystery which I can’t understand,” she answered. “You are to find out all about that. I did not see the lady’s face right, as the carriage went by so fast, and I was horrified at seeing him, and could scarcely take my eyes off him; but I know it was Dick Hanford, my husband.”
“Some one resembling him in features,” I thought. “What were you put in jail for, pray?” I added aloud.
“I was put in once or twice for drink,” she said, hanging her head a little. “He wouldn’t pay the fines, and so I had to suffer. It’s my only failing. I was brought up as a girl behind the bar, and I got to take drink secretly till I couldn’t keep from it. Then I was put away, and went into the factory. It’s down in Leith Walk. I used to be called ‘the Beauty of the Mill,’ and all the men were daft about me.”
“Good heavens!” was my mental exclamation; “daft about a creature like this!”
“I could have had my choice of a dozen men, but I took Hanford, though his wage was the poorest in the place,” she calmly continued. “I suppose it was because I was daft about him. I’m that yet. I never loved anybody else, and never can.”
“You said ‘once or twice for drink’—were you ever in jail for anything else?” I asked, pretty sure that she had kept something back.
“Yes, I was in for two years. It’s only about nine months since I got out. It was then they told me he was dead, and I believed them.”
“What were you put in for?”